Abstract [en]

Accessible summary

The attitude that psychiatric nurses have towards the importance of involving families in their care is fundamental to the quality of the intervention family members are offered. Research evidence supports the view that psychiatric nurses' positive attitudes towards families, in psychiatric care, encourage them to engage more frequently in therapeutic conversations with families.

The main focus of the family nursing education and intervention program (ETI-PROGRAM) was to educate psychiatric nurses in family systems nursing. One of the beliefs in family nursing is that illness is a family affair and therefore it is important to involve families in the care of the patients to be able to soften the suffering of the psychiatric patients and their family members.

The main results of this study emphasize that after the psychiatric nurses had received the education and training program (ETI-PROGRAM) on family system nursing, they viewed families as less burdensome in their psychiatric care.

Abstract

This study measures the attitudes of the psychiatric nurses, after having received an education and training intervention program (ETI-PROGRAM) in family systems nursing, towards the importance of the families in their care. Nurses' knowledge of the impact that family nursing intervention can have on family members may increase positive attitudes towards families. However, little is known about the impact that education and training intervention can have on nurses' attitudes, towards families in clinical practice. Quasi-experimental design was used to assess the change in nurses' attitudes towards families in psychiatric care after the intervention, which included a one-day seminar on the Calgary family nursing conceptual frameworks and skills training with clinical vignettes of families from psychiatry. The Families Importance in Nursing Care – Nurses' Attitude questionnaire was used to evaluate nurses' attitudes. A total of 81 nurses (65%) working in psychiatric care responded to the questionnaire. Nurses with more than 15 years of work experience were significantly more supportive of families in their care compared with less experienced nurses. Out of the 81 nurses, 52 (64%) answered the questionnaire again 14 months later. Furthermore, psychiatric nurses saw families significantly less burdensome after having participated in the ETI-PROGRAM.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2011. Vol. 18, no 10, 895-903 p.

Keyword [en]

Attitudes of nurses towards the importance of families, educational and training intervention program for nurses, family systems nursing, psychiatric nurses